OF mental health care and mentally ill

Prenatal Drug Exposure and Development

Recognition that the use of opiates during pregnancy has potentially harmful effects to the foetus extends back to antiquity; Hippocrates noted that ‘uterine suffocation’occurred in conjunction with maternal opium use (Zagon & McLaughlin, 1984). More recently, arising from public concern about foetal alcohol syndrome in the 1970s and the ‘crack baby epidemic’of the 1980s, a considerable body of research has been devoted to understanding the impact of prenatal drug exposure on the cognitive, social and emotional development of children (de Cubas & Field, 1993; Householder, Hatcher, Burns,& Chasnoff, 1982; Griffith, Azuma,& Chasnoff, 1994).

For the most part, this research has explored the possible teratogenic (birth-defect forming) effects of prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol with maternal and environmental variables being treated as confounding factors,rather than as a primary focus for investigation and understanding. Understanding the findings in research on infants/children exposed to drugs is complicated because of the need to disentangle the prenatal, perinatal, and environmental factors contributing to developmental outcomes.